Skills Composition of Singapore Economy

Claire: Innovation and digitisation puts organisations ahead of their peers and empower them to sustain market relevance. A combination of Collaboration, Problem Solving and Creative Thinking can raise organisations’ resilience through co-developing innovative solutions for business problems.

Anthony: The business world is dynamic and complex. To stay competitive, organisations have to constantly review operating models and maintain their competitive edge to meet the ever-evolving shift in market demands. Problem Solving and Creative Thinking are key CCS employees must have to help organisations grow.

Grace: Employers recognised these CCS as essential future skills that prepare their organisations to adapt to change, remain relevant in the market and be up-to-date with changes in their operating environment.

Claire: As the built environment sector increasingly digitises, having the right culture, relevant competencies and workable processes are key to ensuring success in this transformation. In addition, clients from all sectors recognised that CCS such as Problem Solving and Self Management help them build business resilience and display proactiveness in implementing change management.

Anthony: Communication, Collaboration and Problem Solving are sought after by the hotel sector. These skills enable employees to develop positive interactions and delight their guests, resulting in positive reviews and greater guest satisfaction.

Grace: The engineering profession is specifically interested in Creative Thinking and providing learners with Problem Solving tools, particularly for manufacturing processes. They also indicated interest in Building Inclusivity to create a warm culture for their multi-national teams.  

Claire: Our training intervention incorporates “Action Learning Projects”, consisting of four key components: (1) a clear problem statement focusing on authentic issues faced; (2) a project sponsor; (3) identifying learners with the capacity and capability to learn; and (4) appoint and train learning coaches. This allows learners to apply the CCS to real-life projects in training and reflect on their learning points during group coaching sessions.

Anthony: Face-to-face is still clients’ preferred training option to interact more effectively with the trainers. There is also a need to contextualise CCS training content to make it relevant to their workplace contexts.

Grace: Even before embarking on training, the workforce must be aware of the need for CCS and their skills gaps. Currently, there is very little awareness and low urgency in CCS training. Hence, we are raising awareness by sharing bite-sized CCS content over social media.

Chee Keong: An employee’s ability to manage time and work task effectively have always been important to employers. Now, employees need to go beyond that and learn how to manage their emotions and expectations as well. This will enable them to perform optimally in today’s increasingly complex workplace.

Jacqueline: Employers want employees to be more self-directed and manage themselves, so that they can focus on solving complex problems in complicated business environments. Problem Solving must be strengthened through a collaborative effort. Effective Communication can only be achieved when individuals understand how others receive information and work together.

Nirmala: With the work landscape and technology evolving so quickly, employers want their employees to have both technical skills and CCS, to be creative, innovative, able to communicate cross-culturally, write and present clearly, appreciate and embrace cultural differences in collaborations.

Jeremiah: Self Management is the key integrative factor to better career management. Individuals’ career health depends on their agency and autonomy to ‘want to do something’ to either alleviate or advance their careers. External drivers may exert change, but whether it is sustainable and lasting will depend on the ‘self’.

Nirmala: Adaptability and resilience. Career mobility requires individuals to adapt and transit to changing work environments, learn new skills quickly and bounce back from setbacks and failures. These skills give individuals a positive attitude towards pursuing career goals. Networking skills are also critical for career mobility. Strong professional networks help individuals learn new skills, create job opportunities and gain insights to different industries and job functions.

Chee Keong: Mastery of CCS, especially those that are consistently valued by employers, can help you better manage your career. Conduct an honest stocktake of where you stand in terms of these CCS and be pro-active about closing the gaps. For example, seek out team-based opportunities that require multi-disciplinary contributions so that you can learn how to better appreciate the collective outcome over individual inputs. This builds collaborative skills.

Yi Ling: Individuals can seek 360-degree feedback from their colleagues and decide on the most important CCS areas to work on. If any of these CCS are badly affecting their career health, they can consult career coaches for deeper self-awareness and customised intervention.